Fewer Blacks in City Could Affect the Politics

Cncwarren: James Warren is a columnist for the Chicago News Cooperative.

Whether you’re Mayor Richard M. Daley or Mayor-In-His-Mind-Rahm Emanuel, no voting group is more important for a Democrat than the city’s African-Americans. Increasingly, there are fewer of them.

Like Rod R. Blagojevich, the Census keeps on giving, and newly-crunched data shows a big decline in the city’s black population.

The reasons aren’t mysterious, nor are the ramifications. But the decline may surprise some and might prompt questions about the impact on mayoral and other political races.

The 2000 Census reported that there were 1,054,000 non-Hispanic blacks in Chicago, with 337,361 in suburban Cook County. Those city numbers then started falling, according to the American Community Survey, which is the Census Bureau replacement for the old long form of the Census.

By 2008, the last year for this data, it was down to 936,505, more than a 10 percent drop. The suburban Cook figure is up to 381,886. As a whole, the 2010 city population will probably show a very small drop from the 2,896,000 in the 2000 Census, largely due to a boom in the number of Hispanics.

Ken Johnson, my pro bono data subcontractor, was a longtime demographer at Loyola University and is now plying his trade at the University of New Hampshire. He notes that the decline in the number of blacks is due to a net exodus since black births still outnumber deaths, and that blacks remain the city’s biggest group, at 34.2 percent, compared with 31.3 percent of whites and 28.1 percent Hispanics.

What’s up?

Illinois State Representative Will Burns, who represents a mostly South Side district, said: “African-Americans are the same as most. They want a bigger house, better schools, a better quality of life than they can get in the city.”

There is also, he said, gentrification of traditionally black areas like the South Loop and Bronzeville. And, finally, there’s the exit of some displaced by dramatic changes in public housing, from the Robert Taylor Homes and other demolished projects, though the net number appears small. The notion of a big exit is an “urban myth,” Mr. Burns said.

Mary Sue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, finds some very positive elements at play, including increasingly upwardly-mobile, educated blacks heading to the suburbs, to more welcoming communities than in the past.

There are similar trends in cities with large black populations. There are declines in St. Louis and Houston, among others, Mr. Johnson said.

At the same time, big urban areas — counties at the center of metropolitan areas of 1 million or more people — have been growing faster than the rest of the nation. That’s happening despite population growth slowing in the suburbs and outlying counties.

When it comes to big-city declines in the number of blacks, there is the prospect of less influence in determining elected officials in those cities. There is also, as State Senator Kwame Raoul puts it, the possibility of diminished power in the allocation of resources, namely who gets the most public transportation, public construction and education money.

The rubber meets the road in other ways, including the primal political act of reshaping legislative and Congressional districts. When maps were redrawn after the 2000 Census, the goal of maintaining de facto black districts necessitated greater creativity in linking different communities. In the case of black legislators, it meant linking black strongholds with white areas not seen as engaging in racial-bloc voting, meaning they’d be open to voting for a black.

So Mr. Burns’s district stretches from 74th Street and Grand Crossing on the South Side to 1300 North on the Gold Coast. Similarly, State Representative Annazette Collins’s district runs from the West Side to Bucktown.

When the Democrats in Springfield redraw the Congressional maps this time, bet that a few more black districts will link city and suburban areas. The likelihood of Illinois losing a seat in Congress and the need to acknowledge booming Hispanic growth, may imperil an existing black Congressional seat in the city.

It’s all part of the reality facing Mayor Daley, Governor Quinn, or even Mayor-In-His-Mind Emanuel: managing decline. Now the black population, and the politicians who rely on them for support, must deal with the impact of decline, too.

A version of this article appears in print on April 23, 2010, on page A21A of the National edition with the headline: Fewer Blacks in City Could Affect the Politics. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe